Tag Archives: Home management

This week I am revisiting my “command center“. The “command center” is the latest word for that place in our homes from which we keep track of and manage what is important – schedules, homework, budgets, bills, etc. This is what I came up originally:

After living with mine for well over a year, I have a few issues I need to deal with. First, in our move from one house to another, the spaces just didn’t transfer well. What was in reach and functioning well in our previous house is not compatible with our go-to space in this house. Second, there are some things I simply don’t like about the way I set up my home-management system. For example, I don’t like having everything in a home-management binder, especially bills. It may sound terribly lazy, but when I get a bill in the mail I want someplace to just quickly toss it until bill-paying day rather then getting out my binder, finding the right tab for bills, then filing it. Some aspects I will keep, but this week I will be fine-tuning and changing things up a bit.

A binder. . . woot-woot! Inspired by an idea I saw on the iheartorganizing blog, I am setting up part of my family command center in this binder — a home-management binder. Using binder dividers I created 10 sections. Section 1 is schedules with my overview of the day, week, and month. Section 2 is school information where I keep the kids’ reports, co-op schedules and similarly related items. Section 3 is for church information — volunteer schedules, kid’s programs, etc. Information related to the kid’s sports and extra-curricular activities are in section 4. Section 5 is contact information to keep important numbers and addresses, along with emergency-contact information. I included plastic baseball card holders to add any business cards I might want to keep as reference here. Section 6 is home-maintenance and improvement projects. This is where I will keep record of what and when we have had maintenance and improvements completed, as well as a list of projects we have planned. I placed baseball card holders here also for any related business cards we might collect. Section 7 is Meal Planning (I’m not sure I’ll keep this in my binder long-term — I have plans for a meal-planning calendar later). Section 8 is Finance for budget-planning sheets and also bills. I used a plastic sheet protector in this section to place bills that need to be paid, along with the check-book. Section 9 is my personal section for things I need to refer to — my training schedules for running, book-club information, a list of blog ideas, etc. The final section is for my husband to do the same; it is yet to be determined if he will use it. 🙂

This binder has cleaned up my refrigerator, which was previously littered with schedules and flyers; and it seems to be taking care of part of our paper-piling problems. The rest of our paper and book-piling issues I addressed by spending some much-needed time cleaning up my hutch. I added three baskets purchased at Target this week.

Using free printables from Better Homes and Gardens, I labeled the baskets. The first is “To Do” for things I need to take care of immediately — letters to mail, items to return, magazines to read and file. The rule for this basket is that it cannot get full; if it gets above the rim it needs my immediate attention. The second I labeled “In Use” for things I regularly use but want to keep with-in easy grasp — our family Bible study materials, the kid’s church club booklets, the magazine I am currently working my way through, and our management binder. The final basket is labeled “To File”, which is self-explanatory. I would like to get some matching vertical files to use in this basket so the papers don’t look so unsightly. Again, the rule is that this basket cannot get too full. I actually need to do some filing!

Today’s project is the top two shelves of the hutch (there’s a reason I didn’t show a full picture). 🙂 I’ll keep you all posted!